I’m Calling It: True Blood Has Officially Jumped The Shark

To be a True Blood fan is to put up with a lot: an obnoxious main character, ridiculous plot lines, and an ever-expanding Noah’s Ark of supernatural creatures. The show’s campy absurdity has always been a part of its fun, and whatever sins it commits to make you go “I can’t believe I’m still watching this” are usually balanced out by its better characters and abundance of beefcake. But even True Blood has its own internal logic and standards (or at least it used to), and last night’s season finale was a bridge too far.

Half the events in this episode are things straight out of Looney Tunes. Jason receives the time honored soap opera treatment of hitting his head and having it scramble his brains, and he keeps having hallucinations that his parents are there, telling him to kill all the vampires. When he sees Tara, Eric, and Nora, he manages not to shoot them. But when he rescues Jessica from The Authority’s clutches and she confesses her love for him, he tells the girl he was making puppy dog eyes at just a few episodes ago that “I could never love a vampire.” That sure was some bump to the head!

Related: does anyone else wonder why dudes are so mean to Jessica? She’s like that very pretty friend of yours who always seems to pick the one guy who’s going to treat her like shit. First Hoyt was a big, whiny baby who made her glamor herself out of his memory, and now Jason is being a colossal dick one episode after she risked her life to save his. I hope she meets someone a little bit nicer, because, as your grandma might say, she’s a lovely girl.

Alcide‘s abs notwithstanding, the werewolf sideplot was so dumb and unrelated I’m not going to talk about it, except to say that the rules of V expanded even more this season. Sometimes it hits people like PCP, sometimes like candy-flipping, and sometimes (if someone needs to heal an injury) not at all. And apparently it’s possible to overdose. Blah blah blah, take off your shirt.

Another plot I could do without is the existence of fairies; just when Andy and Holly‘s relationship was taking off, they have to deal with the fairy lady who magically seduced Andy in the woods and talk about it like it was normal cheating. (And if women are fighting over Andy Bellfleur, there really are no good dudes in Bon Temps.) Morella shattering a glass with her scream was another cartoon moment, and not even Lafeyette (criminally absent from this episode) could save the scene with his Cajun margaritas.

But speaking of fairies, FUCK YOU GUYS FOR KILLING RUSSELL EDGIINGTON. Okay, so technically Eric did it to avenge his Viking family, but the fairies helped lure him there. When I watched last week’s episode with my roommate, she cried out “are they going to kill Russell?” and I was like “they would never trade an awesome character for a bunch of dumb fairy characters we don’t even know.” I should’ve known better than to overestimate this show by now. And not only does Russell die, it’s a throwaway moment unbefitting such a brilliantly acted, insane, genteel and maniacal character. His beloved Talbot got a way better death than that; being fucked to death by Eric is not a bad way to go, if you have to choose. But maybe they’re together now in vampire heaven.

The shifters displayed a decent amount of craftiness this episode, even though Sam’s exploding of Rosalyn (the bitchy aging southern belle vampire chancellor) was yet another cartoon moment, and I’ve developed an immunity to Sam’s bare ass. What America will make of the Reverend Steve Newlin vomiting up blood (“is that frat boy blood?” they shall say), turning into a hot woman and warning everyone about the Authority’s true plans remains to be seen. The most important thing is that Emma is safe and allowed to be a human again, although that wolf puppy is just precious.

Then there’s the episode’s main event, in which Tara, Eric, Nora, Sookie and Jason storm the Authority in hopes of rescuing their friends (or in the case of Pam and Tara, more-than-friends, yesss) and talking some sense into Bill, who has gone completely off his nut. We’ve been teased with the prospect of Evil Bill before, but this is the first time he’s really given himself over to it. But due to his striving, power mad, OCD nature, it doesn’t look nearly as good on Bill as it did on Eric. One has to wonder what Bill’s end game or overriding logic is as he kills all his fellow chancellors, including the one he has sex with (R.I.P. Salome), but I guess that would be asking a lot of him at this point. Sookeh tries to bring back the “real” Bill with her emotions and her magic fairy snatch, but Bill’s been burned by said snatch too many times, so he’d rather drink the blood of Lilith and get weird with it. This explodes him into a pile of goo(!!!), but before we have time to ponder whether we’re actually sad about this, he comes back as BILITH, a mad God intent on destroying all of humanity. “Run!” the ever perfect Eric says to Sookie, and then it’s curtains! Blackout! Cliffhanger like whoa!

What does the next season hold for the series’ primary love triangle? As lame as Bill has been lately, a lot of the plotlines have centered around the Bill-Eric-Sookie dynamic, and I doubt he’ll be able to compete all crazy eyed and covered in blood. Plus, Lilith is kind of a one-trick pony, so it’ll be interesting to see if Bill will be able to imbue her with anything resembling a personality (doubtful). My only hope is that Bilith eats everyone but Pam, Eric, Lafayette, Jessica and Tara, who will escape to a vampire-free island somewhere. Jason can come too, but only if he snaps out of it and starts being nicer to Jessica.

TL;DR: Smell ya later, True Blood. It’s been real, but you’ve changed, and I can no longer pretend I’ll respect myself if I stay with you.

BILITH! You have just made my day with that one!
I agree with you completely about the show but of course I’ll tune in next season…

Amy

Agreed. Also, full disclosure, I’ll be discussing True Blood with one of my coworkers shortly and I will use Billith and not give credit to Jamie for it.

jamiepeck

You can have it. I want Bilith to thrive.

AngieD

One minor detail…..

“What viewers will make of the Reverend Steve Newlin vomiting up blood (frat boy blood?), turning into a hot woman and warning everyone about the Authority’s true plans remains to be seen”

…. That wasn’t the real Rev. Steve Newlin.. It was Luna who shifted into the Reverend to try to sneak Emma out of there.

jamiepeck

I know it wasn’t the real Steve Newlin, but the (fictional) people watching might not. Hence they might think it’s frat boy blood.

Cara

Billith! Hahaha! I love it. Love Eric, hate Bill.

Nancy

Honestly, this was the one episode where I thought Andy did look a little hot. I think it was the shirt he was wearing. But yeah, this season just went nuts. And there was hardly any sex to balance it out! Or, as you said, logic. I hate Bill now, it just seems ridiculous that he’d completely go over to that side, but Pam was right about the ‘always looking for something to feel guilty about’ thing. Anyway, short story, this season sucked! I even started to get annoyed with Alcide by the end of it, and I never thought I’d get sick of seeing his body. This season was way too all over the place. I want more naked Jason!!!! Speaking of, I agree the hitting his head and seeing his parents thing was totally ridiculous, so I’m really hoping it’s going to lead to a new sub-plot in which it actually makes a lick of sense.